344 Auduhoii's Ornithology, First Volume. 



Botany, for instance, is no longer an overgrown accumulation 

 of synonyms and absurdities. It no longer is deformed by the 

 ignorance, the want of method, and the lack of fertility of in- 

 vention of its historians, as it had been rendered by the followers 

 of Linnaeus. Entomology has taken rank, to which it is clearly 

 entitled, as a distinct science. Ornithology is no longer the dry 

 and repulsive study of uninteresting technicalities that it was in 

 the day of the great Linnaeus, nor on the other hand does it suf- 

 fer from the crude and ridiculous though eloquent and attractive 

 theories of BufFon. And, although it may not have escaped the 

 effects of the whimsical notions of modern systematists, it is still 

 a science, upon the study of which few can enter without deri- 

 ving from it delight, instruction and improvement. Comparative 

 anatomy is no longer a despised and neglected pursuit, but is now 

 recognized as a distinct science, and is rapidly becoming the 

 basis of all zoological arrangement. Ichthyology has been so 

 changed by separation of subjects no longer embraced by it, and 

 by more than equivalent increases, that it may almost without 

 exaggeration be regarded as having become an entirely new sci- 

 ence. And that most interesting, most instructive, aye, and most 

 profitable of all the natural sciences, geology, has sprung at once, 

 as it were, into light and life. 



By what agency have all these surprising changes been effect- 

 ed ? By whom have all these things been accomplished in so brief 

 a space of lime ? By the munificence of what government, aided 

 and directed by the persevering industry and intelligent investi- 

 gations of what scientific associations, have these incredible 

 changes been brought about ? It seems hardly possible, and yet 

 it is strictly true, that all this astounding revolution, effected as 

 it has been in the short space of half a century, has been brought 

 about with hardly any aid from the patronage of governments, 

 and with very limited and contracted assistance from the coope- 

 ration of scientific societies. True it is, both have lent their par- 

 tial and of themselves ineffectual labors in promoting this great 

 end, but both have been but as humble instruments to set in mo- 

 tion a power far mightier than they. As the single spark will 

 ignite a train of powder, and thus becomes an instrument of suffi- 

 cient power, humble as it may seem of itself, to destroy whole 

 cities, so have the feeble but well directed efforts of the friends 

 of science, by removing the mountain of popular prejudice that 



